The way of life in Israel has no true standard as the people are quite diverse in
nearly every sense of the word. For many of the people religion is important and
drives the weekly routine, but there are numerous people who are only religious
in name. In fact it is religion that divides the people in most ways, but in the
sense of schedule religion does little to alter life from one religion to the next
in the country. The differences in way of life come more in the form of culture.

Most of the people living in Israel are either Jewish or Muslim, both of which share
Friday as their holy day. Due to this, the weekend in Israel is Friday and Saturday.
The Christian minority celebrates Sundays as the holy day, but the majority creates
the weekend. In terms of food and diet, the Jews and Muslims again share some similarities,
such as abstinence from pork, but the Jews and Christians drink alcohol.

For many devout Muslims the day is also centered around the five daily prayers,
although only a minority of people in the country partake in these five prayers.
All the people, Jews, Muslims, and Christians alike seem to find most jobs in the
services industries, particularly in cities, where working hours are more consistent.
Most people in these positions work about eight hours a day.

It's in the free time of the people that the daily way of life differs the most
significantly from religious group to group. The Christians and Jews tend to be
more liberal and much of life is focused on friends as going out to bars and restaurants
is a common activity on evenings and weekends. For many young, single Muslims the
bar scene is often bypassed for a cafe, but again many young people have an active
social life.

For all the people family, religion, and community seem to be important. However,
the differences of these same things also tend to separate the people. None-the-less,
for most people in Israel life is focused on family and the well-being of their
family.

Despite the many differences and similarities mentioned above, there are many people
with vastly different lives, especially those in the Palestinian Territories. For
many of these people life in a somewhat temporary housing unit or town is the norm
as steady jobs and incomes are difficult to come by.

Identity

The people of Israel can't seem to agree on a unifying
means to identify. Most of the Jews identify with both the nationality and religion:
"Israeli," which is a name closely associated with being a Jewish citizen
of Israel. The people that identify in this way tend to be Jewish and see the two
as the same; these people also tend to identify as being Jewish. The Muslim population
tends to disagree on both the name "Israel" as well as its meaning as
they will rarely identify as being "Israeli." The Muslim population tends
to identify as "Palestinian," which, like "Israeli" is closely
tied to a religion and being "Palestinian" infers one is also Muslim,
but the Palestinians also tend to be ethnic Arabs.

Among the other minority groups, both religion and ethnicity play a role in identity.
Armenians tend to identify as such, which infers both an
ethnic and a religious (Orthodox Christian) affiliation, while other Christians
tend to identify as "Christian" or by their ethnicity, which in many cases
are the Phoenicians (Christian Lebanese). So, although there
is no unifying identity, the people generally identify based on religion and to
a lesser degree ethnicity above all else.